The Body in the Bonfire (24 page)

“You can't mean this,” Connie gasped. “More than the school?”

“More than the school,” Robert said, and without actually kicking the woman prostrate at his feet, he made the gesture. She stood up. Her face was drained of color and emotion. It was as if Robert had taken an eraser to a blackboard, obliterating all that had been written on it. Only in this case, the blackboard had been Connie Reed's life.

She reached into the depths of her soul and tried one more time. “I thought Mansfield—and I—stood for something special, that you and I stood for something together.
Veritas et Bonitas.
Remember the day we composed the motto? You told me it was perfect. That I was perfect.”

Faith wished Connie would stop. It was excruciatingly painful to listen to the woman debase herself, detailing years of living a fantasy.

Robert cut her off. “Please don't make this any more difficult than it already is. I need to call the police now.” He walked behind his desk to the phone.

And Constance “Firmness” Reed did stop talking. Comprehension dawned and she looked at the man she had loved in vain for so many years—had worshiped—and with great deliberation, slowly plunged the knife she was holding into her own breast before Faith, or Robert Harcourt, could stop her.

The headmaster froze, and Faith grabbed the phone away from him, punching 911 at last. She looked at Harcourt, who was now stooped over the dying woman, and thought in frustration, How clueless could the man have been? He'd worked with the woman for over twenty-five years. She'd put her picture on his computer, and practically bowed and/or had an orgasm whenever he entered the room. Did he need it spelled out more than that?

Apparently so.

 

Faith had had enough of Carleton House and assumed the boys felt the same way, so she moved the locale for the pièce de résistance student dinner to her own house. In the process, the guest list had grown. Several of the boys had invited girls from Cabot, Brian Perkins had asked Dan Miller, and Faith added Pix and Sam. Then Daryl wanted the Averys. Faith herself extended an invitation to Mrs. Mallory and Mabel. Only Mabel had accepted. Mrs. Mallory gave work as an excuse, even though Faith had offered to help her get the Saturday lunch ready ahead of time. It
was exactly a week since her encounter with Connie Reed. So long as no one clapped her on the back, Faith felt fine. Impulsively, she'd also called Lorraine Kennedy earlier, and the detective had said she'd try to drop by at the very least.

The boys had been hard at work all morning, and now that they'd gone back to school to change, Faith stood in the doorway, surveying the table. It was set perfectly and Zach had made place cards on the computer. For a centerpiece, they'd tucked small pots of bright yellow and deep blue primroses into a basket, covering the tops with Spanish moss.

“Like the egg, Spanish moss is your friend,” Faith had told them. “Get an all-purpose basket lined with plastic and change the pots of flowers with the seasons, hiding the dirt with the moss.”

Tom walked in. Ben had wanted to eat with the big kids and Faith had promised him he could return for dessert, but at the moment he was next door with his sister and Samantha, who had come home from college for this very reason.

“You've taught these boys a lot in a very short time,” Tom said. “They—and a whole bunch of people in their future—should be very grateful. Dad will be here any minute. Where have you put him?” Marian had left the day before on her cruise and Dick Fairchild was coming for the weekend.

“At my right, and next to Sinclair Smith, because they're both such sailors. Boy/girl isn't ex
actly working here, but I always thought that was pretty stupid anyway. Like the ark.”

“The ark wasn't stupid, honey. Without it, we wouldn't be having this shindig,” Tom said in mock seriousness. His wife punched him lightly. The boys came back, and for the next few hours, the parsonage would be filled with food, conversation, and laughter.

“Mrs. Mallory sent these, and a note,” Mabel said, thrusting a large box into Faith's hands. It was filled with cookies, which the boys greeted with delight. Faith had taught them to make delectable flourless chocolate cakes for dessert, but the cookies would fill in any corners.

“You'd better read the note,” Mabel advised. “And I'll go see if I can lend a hand.”

James Elliot came through the door carrying one of the bread baskets. “Oh no you don't.
We're
cooking today! And we're really cooking.”

With Harcourt's support, Patsy Avery and Tom had made themselves available to any students who wanted to talk about Winston Freer, and any of the other recent events at the school. Tom had commented on the sensitive way Patsy handled the kids and how he'd enjoyed the way they'd worked together. He was hoping to set something up permanently—there and at Aleford High. No more Freer disciples had surfaced—or perhaps were not admitting it—but a number of other kids had come to talk to them, among them
James. He'd been powerfully affected by the events of the last weeks and had decided to defer admission to whatever school accepted him in order to participate in Boston's City Year, a post–high school community service program where he'd live and work with people very different from himself.

Settling Mabel in the living room with Tom, his father, who'd just arrived, and a “tetch” of sherry, Faith opened the note from Mansfield's cook.

Faith tucked the note in her apron pocket. She was definitely going to save it. And she would go over and have coffee.

The meal started with carrot ginger soup,
“very easy but elegant,” Faith had told the boys during the class on soups. Almost any vegetable with an onion or some other seasoning thrown in could be heated in chicken broth—canned for these cooks—until the vegetable was soft enough to puree in a blender. They'd added some light cream and powdered Jamaican ginger to produce today's soup. The main course was also simple. They had made Daryl's grandmother's smothered pork chops with her secret spices, which she had revealed to her beloved grandson. While the pork chops had smothered—producing a delectable gravy—the boys had made mounds of mashed potatoes and steamed green beans with a hint of garlic. Patsy had insisted on bringing corn bread and there were some rolls from Boston's wonder baker, Iggy. It was a feast, and even the slender Cabot student Zach had invited asked for seconds. He'd introduced her to Faith with more than a hint of mischief in his eye. “Mrs. Fairchild, this is Susan Beach. Susan, Mrs. Fairchild.” Zach had been a quick study when it came to
that
list of Sloane's.

Plates were cleared and everyone stood up to stretch before dessert was served. The boys and their friends disappeared to pop the chocolate cakes into the oven.

“I feel like taking a walk around the block. Maybe several blocks,” Sam Miller said. “I hope Brian passes on some of what he learned to Dan.”

It hadn't taken the Millers long to get used to
calling their son this, and the name Danny seemed to belong to the distant past. In a way, it all did.

“Speaking of walking, someone walking across your grave?” Will Avery asked, only partly in jest. “You look so serious, Faith.”

“I was just thinking about what's happened, how it seems like a long time ago already. But it wasn't—isn't.”

“You don't betray the dead you loved by not grieving hard every minute,” Mabel said. The woman had intuited what was really bothering her, Faith realized—that three people had died and here she was eating pork chops. She couldn't say she had loved them, but she did mourn them. And they had been loved by others, even Connie. The faculty and students had been the most upset by her death. She was a fixture at Mansfield, a kind of matriarch. One of the boys had summed it up this morning when they were all together getting ready. “Who's going to take care of everyone at school now?” he'd asked.

And Sloane Buxton. Dead before his eighteenth birthday. She thought about his parents, his room, his dreams of the Ivy League since childhood—escape into a world that measured success by the right brands and the right genes. He'd been fertile ground for the seeds Winston Freer had to sow, and the two had become inextricably entwined in one noxious growth. But
dead before his eighteenth birthday. Sloane was just a kid.

Faith had been deep in her thoughts and hadn't realized there was someone at the door until Tom escorted Lorraine Kennedy into the living room. She was wearing black woolen pants and an attractive turquoise sweater. Her hair was loose—and her makeup was still wrong.

“You're just in time for dessert,” Faith said.

“Then I'm a lucky girl,” the detective said. “I talked to John this morning and he told me whatever else I had to do today, forget it and get over here if you were serving food.”

“Cake,” John MacKenzie said succinctly from the doorway, and they all returned to the table.

Faith and Lorraine trailed the others.

“He also said to try not to find any more bodies until he got back,” Lorraine said. Then she added, “But I'm getting out of line here. What you went through, are going through, is nothing to joke about.”

The woman's Boston accent sounded stronger.

“It's all right,” Faith said. Today was making it all right. She was glad Detective Kennedy had joined them. Here's my chance, Faith thought. “Maybe we could get together for lunch sometime. A fun thing to do is go to Bloomingdale's and get a makeover at one of the cosmetics counters.”

“You don't like my makeup.” It wasn't a question.

Faith linked her arm in Lorraine's. “I don't like your makeup.”

“Well, why didn't you just come out and say so, for Gawd's sake?” Lorraine laughed. “Now, I want some of that cake and everything else I missed. I'll work backward.”

The kids were in high spirits. In the kitchen, they'd put some Jimmy Cliff on Dan's sound system—his well and truly. He'd taken money out of his bank account after telling his parents how much he owed. Faith started to tell Zach to go turn it off, but then “Many Rivers to Cross” started playing. Her favorite. She looked around the table and thought of all the rivers they'd crossed and all the ones to come. Dick Fairchild had been talking about sailing with Sinclair, but Sinclair had turned to Patsy on his other side and Dick was looking wistful. Maybe he was imagining Marian with a stud muffin, binoculars looped about a muscular bronzed neck; maybe he wanted more cake; or maybe he was thinking he would never, ever again let his wife go on a trip alone and leave him behind.

John MacKenzie was talking with the girl he'd brought, who was similarly serious-looking, but she was one of those girls with glasses straight out of an old movie where someone says, “Why Miss so-and-so, I never dreamed you were so pretty!” when her specta
cles are removed. Faith had been afraid John would want to invite Paul Boothe and had debated telling the boys no faculty guests. She'd mentioned it to Zach, who had hastened to reassure her that some of the bloom was off the rose, Boothe's feet having developed definite clay-like properties. “Maybe John's just pissed at not getting into the class, but it's more seeing the guy stoned or loaded a lot. I don't think you have to worry about Paul Boothe coming to our party,” Zach had said.

Then there was Daryl. Daryl looking like a kid again. Daryl—where it had all started. He would carry the searing memory of the noose on his bed, the hate mail, and the clippings forever. She hoped it wouldn't make him bitter, then chided herself. How could it not? And it should. Make us all bitter. Not poisoned, but very, very bitter.

Ben came running into the room. Faith saw a look of annoyance cross his face as he realized they had already started dessert without him. She opened her mouth to head him off at the pass. Instead, she heard Dan, who was sitting next to her, say, “Hey, little buddy, come over here. Your cake is waiting.”

He pulled Ben onto his lap.

Faith saw Pix beaming at the two boys, maternal pride on her face. Dan's latest math test had been a very respectable
C+
. For the moment, the lid was on next door.

All these boys. What kind of men would they be? She'd learned more than she wanted to know about what it meant to be an adolescent in these times, but what she had learned had been an affirmation in the end. These were fine boys, crossing rivers deep and shallow, each in his own way, each with courage—and dumb luck. Still, she wished she could slow life down and give both her children more years of childhood, a buffer against learning names for things Faith hadn't known existed until she was so much older than the teenagers here at the table. She suddenly realized she'd heard Marian say the very same thing about Tom and her other children—it all went too fast. Whistler's mother, Adam and Eve's—well, forget that, they didn't have a mother—all mothers back to the beginning had probably said or thought the very same thing. She smiled to herself; she'd tell Tom later.

Dan and Brian Perkins were talking about computers. It sounded as if they were speaking in code. Ben was demolishing his cake. Some was above his right eyebrow, but she knew enough to resist the urge to reach over with her napkin and wipe it off. Now they were talking about some games they wanted. Ben piped up with his own opinions. She listened in surprise. He seemed extremely knowledgeable.